


how they hold you like a gun.

by incalyscent



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Flashbacks, How Do I Tag, Light Angst, Lowercase, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prose Poem, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, devil bod, i guess, local poet does prose, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25949854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incalyscent/pseuds/incalyscent
Summary: lucifer has made many mistakes.  she is not one of them.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 18
Kudos: 83





	how they hold you like a gun.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brokenjaw (Vrael)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vrael/gifts).



> let me sleep  
> i am tired of my grief  
> and i would like you  
> to love me, to love me, to love me
> 
> this is the night when these woods sigh
> 
> come with me  
> there are people who cannot speak  
> without smiling
> 
> they would take me from your hand  
> or they would try, they would try
> 
> this is the murmur of the land  
> this is the sound of love's marching band  
> and **how they hold you like a gun**  
>  and how i sing you like a song  
> i heard when i was young  
> and buried for a night like this
> 
> -winter aid, _the wisp sings_.

_ and i’m...well, i’m not worth it. _

_ yeah, you’re probably right. _

-

in a dream he is good. in a dream she touches the scars at his back and he doesn’t flinch - in a dream he’s what he wants to be for her, equal measures soft and strong. playful and enamored. in a dream, the dreamer doesn’t know. she almost knows. but in a dream he can’t be a monster because that’s not what he is. she can’t love a monster if he’s not, in that dream.

if only he could see what  _ good _ she sees in him; if only he’d let her lick the sin from his lips one last time.

-

(and when is the monster not a monster? oh, when you love it.)

-

the first time it happens, he doesn’t really see it. there are no reflections in hell, freshly burning; no mirror or still body of water, just endless miles of ash. everything  _ hurts _ , his skin, his burning wings. it’s the last time he utters the name of god. he touches his face and it feels bubbled, stings, already scarring over hopeless and red, and he tips his head back and says  _ god, oh god _ and he does not answer.

-

she’s seen him like this before, of course.

silhouetted in night, begging for forgiveness from the one thing who won’t give it. loathing is something that crawls up his skin, burns him ragged. sometimes he doesn’t know why it even shows up. but he’s hiding in his room, passing palms over jagged skin, like he can wipe away the hate, like he can smooth out the torred crinkle of tightness in his chest. he can’t.

which is why he can’t help the way his leathery wings clamp shut at the ding of the elevator, going rigid as the door slides open. even if he is not visible from there, he feels naked. anxious.

“lucifer?”

he wants to tell her to go home, that she shouldn’t be here, but he can’t muster up anything close to it. truth is, he wants her here, that primal yearning for comfort, even if he thinks he may not deserve it.

“in here.”

-

there are versions of him that are only kept alive because other people breathe for them. there’s the rebel angel chest compressed by his brothers and sisters in heaven. there’s the gentler him spat out by milton. the tyrant feared by so many is another. these devils are all him, and he is all devils.

he also feels like he is none of them; what he is now, what he’s grown into - only one person could possibly fit all he is now, at this moment, in her hands. and she does. oh, she does. and it’s almost too much to bear.

-

in order to be known he first needs to be seen. chloe’s eyes are ice water or sparks and he is a nerve, flayed open, flesh and soul. what did he do to be looked at, the way she’s looking at him?

-

_ detective. chloe. i’m the devil. _

_ no you’re not. not to me. _

-

she touches him and it’s like heaven and earth moved for everything to fall into place. maybe they did.

-

lucifer is what the romans called the morningstar, a god of the dawn, venus. it does not escape him that venus was also beauty. what an irony, that is. what ravaged skin could call down the goddess of beauty to kiss him?

-

“you shouldn’t be here,” he says, even though he makes no effort to move away from her, no effort to close himself off from the shine in her eyes or the way her fingers trail up his neck. she looks concerned for him, not something he can say he’s used to. all he knows is that when she cups his face her palm is blessedly cool against the ravaged fire of his skin.

“yes i should.”

she doesn’t have to ask - she knows well enough the bad days can come without a warning. she knows. she’s felt it. he knows she has. and that’s what he thinks about when she curls her fingers around his skull, tipping his head down so their foreheads can touch; he’s so gentle when he puts his hands on her, so many claws, too many spines, but he can still hold her. these hands are still good for something.

-

two thousand years ago there was a book and it carved him out a monster but he was writing something else, something about love and pain, something with teeth and babbling brookes. some time ago he handed her the pen and she gave it back. don’t worry. they’ll finish that book together. they’ll turn that page eventually.

-

she pushes the remains of ravaged silk from his shoulders and it’s like shedding old skin. part of him wants to curl away and the other? wants to itch fresh flesh raw and revel.

-

in the shower he doesn’t get on his knees, rather, she does, not to pray, and not for anything else but to scrub him clean and new. still, the action feels too reverent now, with his wings big and cramped against the wall, the spines of bone bisecting him.

(there was a story, once, where feet were washed in love. lucifer doesn’t dwell on it; there’s already too much in his chest.)

“i’m sorry,” he says.

“don’t be,” she says.

when she stands and cradles his face he remembers everything before the fall in the blink of an eye. for a moment, he remembers what it’s like to be holy.

when she kisses him he thinks of what a fool he was for thinking that humans were fragile. she is the strongest thing he will ever hold, and he kisses her like a man drowning. this water is not baptism; he is not born anew when they exit the shower, but he wants to be. he wants to try.

-

how sad, he used to think love. how many people did he torture in hell that had love in their loop, chasing it, losing it. he used to think that love only came hand in hand with guilt and with grief, and he’s right. he’s right. 

but that doesn’t mean it isn’t  _ worth it _ .

-

“is it worth it, detective?”

_ and i’m...well, i’m not worth it. _

_ yeah, you’re probably right. _

“yes. it’s worth it.”

-

so gold blooms from red while chloe sleeps in the wicked curve of his wing, claw at his thumb dangerously close to her cheek but she is fearless in love even if he is a coward. how many times he ran; how many times he broke her heart and she sewed it back up and kept on loving.

some self loathing thing bets he doesn’t deserve it. some self loathing thing remembers the monster and thinks he hasn’t grown out of - or rather, into - it. he is what he is; not an angel and not a demon but something in between. fresh hell is growing his feathers back. fresh hell is trying not to scratch at his new flesh, begging his hands to lay waste to the want to map out every familiar scar.

he’d call her the sun but the sun is lonely. she is earth, and he’s the moon, spinning in an eternal orbit. they’ve crashed together. it’s only inevitable.

-

there was a time in the garden in which he witnessed the birth of love. maybe it was fleeting. maybe it was engineered and maybe that’s why he was so  _ scared _ to love chloe. but watching adam stare at eve, his polaris, well. it was the first time, however grudging, he could see what his father saw in humanity.

it doesn’t matter that he spoiled it. what matters is that it exists. past all things, even. immortality at its basic form.

-

in a dream she has wings like oilslick black, and she is sharp teeth, sharper than his, and she’s both sides of a coin only he has ever flipped. in a dream she touches him like he hasn’t been touched, like he’s somewhere outside a prayer and inside the realm of the living; he’s not holy and she doesn’t expect him to be but she makes him want to sing again. so he does. in a dream his fingers map out a song he hasn’t heard since he fell from the silver city - the music faded as he crashed through the earth but here he remembers it. she coaxes it out of him. he lets her.

-

when he wakes he wakes to eyes of blue. it’s still early enough that he can feel humanity’s first prayer buzzing around him. oh, what a feeling it was to be worshipped, and to trade it for her? he’d do it again. a thousand times.

_ and i’d do it again, and again. don’t you know that, detective? _

her hands pass up his chest, feeling each ridge of rib and valley of muscle until they land on his jaw. she smiles, and it’s better than breathing, that smile, and he meets her halfway just to feel those lips on his own.

“feeling better?”

“much.”

she shifts, he’d call her haloed by the sun if he thought her an angel. he did once. he now knows she has more to her than any of his siblings could dream of.

humans. so flawed, and in that imperfection, better because of it.

“you’ll call me next time, won’t you?”

“yes detective.”

an eyebrow arches and his heart goes with it. “chloe.”

she melts.

-

lucifer is used to feeling like a weapon. he’s a lifetime of pain and too long holding the knife, even if he never uses it. the one time he was part of the war he fell. since then he’s been a loaded gun with his own finger on the trigger. all this time, he just needed someone to  _ see  _ him. how long it was, before someone  _ really _ looked at him.

which is why she doesn’t see the cracked skin or the spines. she just sees him.

-

lucifer has made many mistakes. she is not one of them.

**Author's Note:**

> for bj whom i love more than i can express so i hope this does a little justice
> 
> incalyscent-writes.tumblr.com


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